“He who sleeps on a full stomach whilst his neighbour goes hungry is not one of us.”

Saying of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)

On Sat 8th June, in the lead up to the G8, David Cameron is hosting an international hunger summit in London. On this day, various actions by grassroot networks are planned.

BEYOND ‘IF’: Wisdom In Nature (WIN) appreciates that a number of NGO’s, including some Muslim ones, are supporting the big IF campaign, and that the IF campaign has some good points (such as, tax transparency, action on land grabs and biofuels, for example). WIN also believes that the IF campaign has a fundamental gap – it remains weak on the issue of ‘power’. There is no clear demand to take away corporate control from food and farming and give it back to people – and it thus seems to leave food and farming open to further control by GM companies. Additionally, we would like to see support for the already developing Food Sovereignty movement that arose over many years through small scale farmers around the world.

Image via: www.theprisma.co.uk

“Food sovereignty proposes an alternative food system that creates practical, sustainable and democratic solutions to the failed industrialised food model. It is an approach developed by smallscale food producers in the global South that has become a global movement….

It is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”

Approximately a billion people in the world are ‘hungry’. We feel that real solutions to hunger must facilitate communities to define their own food and agricultural systems, and not to be prescribed to by large corporations.

Thus, after consideration within, Wisdom In Nature has chosen to give its support to Food Sovereignty events on Sat June 8th: the events are direct: they involve creating community gardens as a demonstration that food is a right for everyone!

**To find out how you can join in Food Sovereignty Events in the UK on Sat 8th June: See below!!**

“This was not my first event on food justice – I had been to dozens. Yet… walking through woodland that happened to be slippery, slopey and still, I weaved my way to Organiclea, a workers food growing cooperative on the edge of London, to attend a food justice event that went far beyond expectation…” Read full post>>> http://tinyurl.com/brw8m3q

Where: London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol, StroudWhen: Sat 8 June 2013Meeting place in London: Meet at 9.30am outside The Blackfriars pub, 174 Queen Victoria St, London EC4V 4EG. (Nearest tube: Blackfriars. Take the Blackfriars Bridge exit and the pub is on your right as you exit the station.) From there we will move as a group to a nearby location for the action.Theme: Create a pop up community garden in central London (and other cities across the UK)More information: Email info@foodsovereigntynow.org.uk to find out more or check facebook event

Things to bring for London: Wheelbarrows, tools, plants to plant, seeds, soil, banners, and anything else to make a community garden flourish.

Organised by the UK food sovereignty movement

On 8 June, in the lead up to the G8, David Cameron is hosting a hunger summit in London. This summit is a meeting where some of the biggest corporations (including Monsanto, Cargill, Vodafone and Unilever) in the world are going to pledge millions to “stop” world hunger.

This is part of what is called the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (launched at the G8 last year). In actual fact, this New Alliance is going to be the vehicle to spread land grabbing and GM across the African agricultural economy. African countries are going to be signed up to aid conditionalities that will open them up for private takeover of their land and seeds and further resource extraction. Civil society organisations in Africa are not being consulted; their demands are to put power into the hands of small producers not large corporations.

A few weeks ago, a group of community gardeners, radical NGOs and anti-corporate activists met in London to make sure an alternative voice goes out on the 8 June.

With the IF campaign not doing enough to criticise the New Alliance, the hunger summit is set to give David Cameron his ‘Make Poverty History’ moment at the same time as signing away African people’s rights. There must be action now to delegitimise this hunger summit and call for the real solutions to the food system set out in food sovereignty.

This is why you must spread the word and come and join us to take action on 8th.

The idea is to plant a community garden outside the venue of the hunger summit. This will demonstrate that food is a right for everyone not a commodity to make profit from. So bring your barrows, bring your plants, bring some soil and bring some seeds and show the world that food is for people not for profit.

To find out more about the location and target for the protest send us an email to: info@foodsovereigntynow.org.uk

1 Comment

I&#39;m so glad Muzammal introduced Food Sovereignty in his &#39;Beyond Expectation&#39; post last July. (There is a link to it in this post.) … Really looking forward to participating in the Food Sovereignty community gardening in Edinburgh on Saturday. Anyone else going?